Good friend, writer, student, musician and wordsmith Emily Davidson penned this piece in the midst of a worship time at a recent gathering. She has astonished me many times with the moving wisdom that flows from her young but seasoned spirit.

It’s my privilege to share its themes with you here:

AUBADE

(definition: A song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or
evoking daybreak)

Here we stand,

Even unto the rising of the sun.

Emily Davidson, January 2007

Scot McNight brings a strong article to Christianity Today on elements within the emerging Church movements.

I must say, that the term “emerging Church” sounds tonight to me be arrogant – as if the emerging Church was somehow an utterly different animal than the historic Church. I understand it’s necessity, but tire of the spin that separates the otherwise inseparable.

Five Streams of the Emerging Church | Christianity Today.

It seems a designer and I share a name. Good to meet you, Dan. See you in the Google threads!

Check out Dan’s photography – the other Dan, I mean – at the site below.

Enhanced Innovations - Online Playground of Dan Wilt

We had a rich time of worship this morning, in an acoustic-driven set. Joel Mason and I led together, along with Matt Frise on violin and Dan Frye on cahon. Ry Siggelkow brought up the end with some beautiful original ministry music textures.

We went back to the early church (Phos Hilaron/Joyous Light), then onto a new one from me called I Will Respond (With My Life), then onto a fresh version of my previous Apostles’ Creed arrangement, then onto Joel’s rendition of the hymnFor The Beauty Of The Earth (very Coburn-esque).

Then, no matter how cool your community is, there are always budget gatherings. From there, kids to a jewelry-making class (very cool - a local jewelry artist named Grace Rouleau), then picking up my youngest from his hockey game trip, then groceries for the week (my wife is very ill this week), then dinner, then my middle daughter to indoor soccer practice, then….

This is one sabbath that was pulled out from under my feet – I suppose it’s fine if its the exception rather than the rule. Overall, a rich day, but full.

eGood and eGad.

forward
on points of no return

I walk the bridge beneath my feet,
That bears my soul from height’s despair;
And forward in this trepid quest,
Toward the far, new edge I dare.

Return no more to ways I knew,
Nor fright me with this dang’rous goal;
All time should well be spent on this
Ascent, descent, of foot and soul.

dan wilt
st. stephen, 2007

I’m grateful for this word from Rex Miller’s blog. Good word, Rex.

Millennium Matrix: 10 Mistakes Worship Leaders Make - Introduction - The Epic Story

Long-time contemporary/emerging worship influencer Matt Redman now has a blog. His voice continues to be a deepening and inspiring voice to us all.

Over the years, we’ve met a number of times in a variety of places, and Matt has always shown the goodness and grace one would expect from the writer of such liminal (”threshold”) worship music.

Take a moment and pay his blog a visit.

Beautiful News.

This term, our One Year Diploma students at the Institute Of Contemporary & Emerging Worship Studies are engaging with the riches of spiritual formation literature throughout the ages of the Church. We are also engaging together in a Spiritual Formation Group, based on Richard Foster and Renovare’s model, and participating with resident SSU Spiritual Director Lorna Jones in Ignatian Prayer activities.

To become present to God, to His activity in history, to His word, to ourselves and to one another inside and outside of community – this is a primary goal for this course.

Anyone is welcome to join in these InReflection blog posts on spiritual formation, which will be for our course participants to reflect on ideas they have been reading about and applying from historic spiritual formation literature.

Our next reading is focused on Ignatius:The Movements Of The Soul.

INRESPONSE QUESTION:

Reflect on the key ideas presented in this writing, and reflect on how do they personally apply to your life as a follower of Jesus, as a spiritual influencer and as a creative leader. (300-500 words).

Our Spirituality & The Formation Of The Worship Leader class dove into a beautiful, and difficult idea the other day. With Spiritual Director Lorna Jones, we were asked the question,

“What is a contemplative attitude?”

Ideas from history, included conceptions about inactivity, over-thoughtfulness, endless prayer times/experiences, and a listening and considered life were brought to the table.

Then, a beautiful idea was unearthed by a Catholic Master’s of Ministry student in our Ignatian prayer circle. He spoke of the idea of considered action; action that is rooted in the thick, rich soil of thoughtfulness, consideration, listening and then ultimately, weighed action.

I shared how the word “contemplative” is akin to the word “contemporary,” i.e. “con” meaning “with” and “templ” meaning “space set apart” (in the class, I thought it meant “time”). In other words, a contemplative approach to life is a listening way, a life “with space set apart” to reflect, remember, reconsider and respond.

It is a way of living that is “in time,” “in space,” and further to this “takes time,” and “takes space.” It is a way of living that is present; present to oneself, present to others and present to God in the moment and in the space we are in – no matter where it may be.

In other words, a contemplative attitude in living is a life with space, the very antithesis to the life patterns nurtured by the fray of our age.

I shared that this is the quality that I see (and embrace my own broken journey toward) in spiritual and Christian leaders all over the world.

Our capacity to be present to ourselves, present to one another, present to our community and present to God is truncated by our lust for quick action and immediate effect.

Rather than being a way of living that is quiet and inactive, a contemplative way of living is the way of substantial action versus what I would call shadow action.

Substantial action is considered action based on listening to God, our own hearts and the hearts of others, and sometimes takes a long time to come to – but with lasting effect. Our own bodies are cared for in the process and there is a sense of rest and commitment to conclusions because of the wait involved.

Shadow action would characterize the fray of activity that is engendered by our need to be immediately and effectively productive in the moment. We forget what our own bodies and hearts are telling us, plow through people (or use them) to get our need for activity or results met, and barely hear God on each decision as we move “through time” to the next big event.

Sometimes shadow action is quite effective, and can gain a person results, more activity, financial gain and much more. However, it rings hollow in the heart over the course of years, and often is shown to be what it is – a flurry of exertion with no clear substantive purpose that has a glimmer of the jewel of eternity within it.

I want to live with a contemplative attitude, as a listener to my own heart, the heart of the community and the heart of God, acting (sometimes more slowly than I presently do) in considered and reflective ways, and then trusting that those actions will ultimately bear the fruit that I would seek in more quickly gratifying manners.

To live the contemplative way is not to recall an old paradigm for novelty’s sake, but to recognize that one of the gifts of history is that it hold some jewels that apply specifically to the brokenness and need of our own day and culture.

I believe the world needs to see followers of Jesus, in all spheres of gift and skill, living life in a contemplative way.

That is the way I sense that I am being trained to live here in the small town of St. Stephen in our faith community, and the way I want to help train artistic and creative leaders, especially worship leaders, to live before God and humankind.

Present to ourselves, present to others and present to God. This would be a beautiful life.

Our studies this term, for our Institute One Year Diploma students, include our course called In The Face Of God: Leadership In Ancient & Emerging Worship Practice.

One idea felt important to both note and consider today for those working through the realities of being a follower of Jesus in a postmodern reality:

How often, historically, must the Church react to itself as the people of God (ideally “respond” instead of “react”, but we get behind and must have rude awakenings), as we react to the cultures (of which we are an integral part as a community of human beings) of which we are a part?

What then precipitates, and determines, real, long-term change, that goes beyond novelty and into permanence?

This rich welcoming, this “crying out for” (the meaning of “invocation”) for the Holy Spirit of God to envelope us in His light was sent to me by good friend and colleague Gregg Finley, the Dean Of Arts at St. Stephen’s University.

It ministered to me deeply as I read the prayer, and I felt God so near as its simple words rolled through my mind and spirit.

Most powerful Holy Spirit,
come down
upon us
and subdue us.

bathe us
with Your brilliance
of Your light
like dew.

An Invocation of the Holy Spirit (from Celtic Daily Prayer: from The Northumbria Community

A thought for the believing innovator.

Between the new iPhone, and the new Apple TV, the JobsClan certainly are often the first out of the gate (i.e. the first to present attractive technologies in accessible manners from behind secret doors) shaping the face of pop culture.

Fascinating. I’d love to see more believing men and women at the wheel driving well-resourced, highly innovative technological advancements, along with rehumanizing ideas, into the heart of the zeitgeist.

I don’t want to see that reality as a novelty or as just another example of a “Christian person we can point out as unique and inspiring;” but rather as an example of those who bear the thought that innovation/culturally-shaping achievement is “just the way those who follow the way of Jesus do life.”

Doing things lovingly, and well, and powerfully – could that be a resuscitating creational theology that embraces the high view of the human person God seems to hold?

Check out the One-Minute Sermon on right now. Through the whole biblical story in 1 minute. Nicely done.

Faith Forward

This term, our One Year Diploma students at the Institute Of Contemporary & Emerging Worship Studies are engaging with the riches of spiritual formation literature throughout the ages of the Church. We are also engaging together in a Spiritual Formation Group, based on Richard Foster and Renovare’s model, and participating with resident SSU Spiritual Director Lorna Jones in Ignatian Prayer activities.

To become present to God, to His activity in history, to His word, to ourselves and to one another inside and outside of community – this is a primary goal for this course.

Anyone is welcome to join in these InReflection blog posts on spiritual formation, which will be for our course participants to reflect on ideas they have been reading about and applying from historic spiritual formation literature.

Our first reading, done today in class and due on each Tuesday, is focused on Bernard Of Clairvaux’s Four Degrees Of Love.

INRESPONSE QUESTION:

Reflect on the key ideas presented in this writing, and reflect on how do they personally apply to your life as a follower of Jesus, as a spiritual influencer and as a creative leader. (300-500 words).

Yesterday, a bright, vibrant young leader, who has been a part of our St. Stephen’s University community as a student and as a travel term leader, and is dearly loved by many, took his life in a nearby city.

Today, we gathered as a community, stumbling over how to have any kind of “chapel service” in the wake of this tragedy. Another worship leader and I were poised at the ready, with a few songs that created an honest, lamenting space with God, and that had a focus on that which is never changing – God’s character.

Instead, at a key moment, our violinist, Matt Frise, was asked to play Gow’s Lament in the middle of the tears and sharing. As his notes soared high, they lilted into the hearts of the mourning like red leaves from an autumn tree, bringing comfort, and permission, to the spilling wounds of the heart.

Then Holli Durost and I played as folks were leaving, and her rich voice and honest creative expression seemed to further to weave in and out of the souls of those mingling about, creating an intangible space of rest for the heavy heart.

Then, a friend just emailed me to say that in the middle of last night, in a moment of questing for clarity in the face of this young man’s death, a phrase from a song I wrote over the past month became a piece of beauty she found solace within.

Beauty is a place to which we can go. It is a sanctuary without walls, a resting place without windows, a comforting place without hands.

John Eldredge suggested once that when his good friend Brent died, no words or encouragements could console him. However, beauty could.

In the face of great tragedy, allow beauty to heal.

As a musician and creative leader, be on call to share your gift for the common good.